Monday, Aug. 18, 2003 - 7:08 p.m.
Monday, August 18th was spent all day on a bus from Lima to Nasca, about 7 hours. Unfortunately the bus ride wasn't all that great. Leaving the terminal one hour late, without explanation, I realized how little leg room I had, especially when the guy in front of me reclined his seat almost into my face. I tried unsuccessfully to sleep with the faint smell of stale beer and the worst movies ever made being shown on the monitor above. I think all horrid movies end up on Latin American buses going across country, dubbed in Spanish. We round one more corner through the Peruvian desert, brown dusty hills surrounding us as I once again wipe the light layer of dust and sweat from my forehead. The sun is setting behind us, we still are a couple of hours from our destination city, and another horrible movie begins. I lay my head back in the chair, staring out the window, unable to sleep. I look at the flat, brown, dry landscape, very little greenery is present. The buildings take on the same coloring of the land, making everything look like dull, dusty brown sand; the buildings, houses, the market stalls, the hills...everything is brown and dusty. Eventually I'm able to nod off to sleep for a precious hour before we arrive, in the dark, to Nasca.
Immediately we are bombarded with street vendors, waving plastic soda bottles in our face, and hotel and tour recruiters approaching us, even before we disembark from the bus and retrieved our backpacks. The Lonely Planet warns of crooks and swindlers at the bus station pushing tours and hotels that don't exist, in an attempt to separate tourists from their money. The guys and I had already picked out a hotel from the guide book and insisted on going there, even though it was $10 a night (we're used to spending more like $4), and the recruiters were trying to persuade us to go to a place that was only $3.
We checked into the Hotel Alegria ("Happiness Hotel", how cute), arranged a tour for the next day, had dinner, checked e-mail and then slept very soundly that evening.
